The producers of “Goin’ Home,” the Fats Domino tribute album released in 2006 by the Tipitina’s Foundation, knew what they were doing when they paired Robert Plant with the Lafayette swamp-pop group Li’l Band O’Gold to record.

“He’s way hip to all sorts of music and happenings and history from around these parts, and music from Southwest Louisiana in particular,” said C.C. Adcock, the band’s guitarist. Before the recording sessions, he and the former Led Zeppelin frontman strategized on the phone.

“And he’d be name-checking and quoting all the tastiest old vintage records that were made down here, the specific sounds and cool bits of each of them that really moved him.”

Phil Phillips’ “Sea of Love”, which Plant had recorded with his Honeydrippers, and Cleveland Crochet’s more obscure “Sugar Bee” were two of his favorites. He even told Adcock he hoped for a Nathan Abshire accordion sound, dropping the name of the iconic Cajun musician.

“I let him know not to worry, that Nathan was from Basile, and that our boy Steve Riley was from Mamou which is also in Evangeline Parish, and that there was a damn good chance that they were related.”

The sessions went great; the band ultimately cut “It Keeps Rainin’”, a Fats track co-written by Bobby Charles. Plant later sat in with the band as a surprise guest at Tipitina’s, and spent a few days visiting with them in Lafayette. The band’s latest album, “The Li’l Band O’Gold Plays Fats”, includes ”It Keeps Rainin’” and another collaboration with Plant on Fats’ “I've Been Around.” They stayed in touch, catching up when Li’l Band O’Gold played in Austin in December 2012, where Plant now has a home.

“The band was cooking that night,” Adcock remembered. “I think that’s probably what reminded him, and then we got the call.”

Li’l Band O’Gold joined Plant as the opener on a short Southern tour this summer with his Sensational Space Shifters, playing Dallas, Houston and Austin the third week of June. In mid-July, they’ll regroup for shows in Memphis and at New Orleans’ Mahalia Jackson Theater on July 17. It’s a dream gig for the band, but after the joy of the initial invitation wore off, there was a wrinkle to contend with. Drummer Warren Storm, known as the godfather of swamp pop, unexpectedly quit Li’l Band O’Gold just before New Orleans Jazz Fest.

The 76-year-old Storm was an original member of the group, which was founded informally in the late '90s as a Monday-night jam session at a Lafayette tavern called the Swampwater Saloon.

“From inception, and all along, the band has been centered around Warren’s phenomenal singing and drumming,” Adcock said, calling him “the rarest of talents.” Warren’s version of Bobby Charles’ “I Don’t Wanna Know”, butter-smooth and heartbreaking, had become a signature song for the group.

Storm left Li’l Band O’Gold to focus on playing with Willie Tee’s Cypress Band, his other ongoing project in the Lafayette area. The departure was a surprise, and stung, Adcock said – especially when the band was “in high cotton, with Jazz Fest gigs and the Plant dates on the books.”

“But all said, Warren knows that there’s an open door and that he’s always welcome back to sing a few, if he’d like. We’re all brothers in this thing,” Adcock said. “If Warren comes around and decides he wants to feel that golden sound we all make together again, it’s cool.”

The Lafayette-based drummer, in his late 70s, has mostly been playing zydeco in recent years, backing Fernest Arceneaux and in the Creole Zydeco Farmers. But half a century ago, his bluesy rumba beat was a staple of recordings coming out of producer J.D. Miller’s studio in Crowley; you can hear it on Slim Harpo’s “King Bee”, Guitar Gable’s “Congo Mombo,” the original version of Rod Bernard’s swamp-pop anthem “This Should Go On Forever,” and, notably, Warren Storm’s first record, a 1958 swamp-pop version of the country tune “Prisoner’s Song.” At the 2013 Slim Harpo awards ceremony May 1 at the Manship Theatre in Baton Rouge, Storm and Etienne were honored together as “legends.”

The Li’l Band O’Gold, which Adcock has described as "one part coonass, three parts Buena Vista Social Club," is a South Louisiana supergroup with not a small amount of firepower, featuring Steve Riley’s accordion, the accomplished songwriter David Egan on piano, former Clifton Chenier sideman Li’l Buck Sinegal on guitar, swamp-pop singer Tommy McClain and Richard Comeaux on lap steel. Dickie Landry, a sort of Cajun Renaissance man who has played with the avant-garde composer Philip Glass and exhibited his visual art at the Whitney Museum in New York, plays sax. And just as Warren Storm’s sound was a defining element for the band, so is Etienne’s, and Adcock digs it.

“He made us immediately sound spookier and swampier and more low-down,” he enthused. “His whole approach is pre-rock 'n' roll, and his pocket always has a bit of a swing to it, like an old jazz drummer.” And Etienne still anchors the group with a hard backbeat on heavier, more rock 'n' roll tunes, he said: “It’s like having the Creole Charlie Watts back there. He’s just got that feel.”

The phone call to Robert Plant explaining the lineup switch was not a particularly fun one. “I mean, like all of us, I know he’s a big fan of Warren’s. Apparently Robert even had ‘The Prisoner’s Song’ 45 as a kid in England.”

“When I let him know about the changes, I tried to keep it light,” Adcock said. “I even slipped in the quip, ‘What sort of band would cease to exist just because they lost their drummer?”

Tickets are on sale now for the Li’L Band O’Gold and Robert Plant’s Sensational Space Shifters at the Mahalia Jackson Theater Wednesday, July 17.